Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader (30 page)

And she triumphed again. Naomi won a rare remission of hepatitis. She now enjoys vastly improved health and the continued success of her girls—Wynonna’s spectacular solo career and Ashley’s Hollywood stardom. The doctors were baffled, but the younger Judds were less surprised. They’ve always known that “Mom is a force to be reckoned with.”

There’s no limit to what a mom “nose” about her own child. And no limit to the importance of staying in touch.

M
any mothers say they can identify the cry of their own infant. And they soon learn to know them by sight. But humans aren’t known for their good sense of smell. So it was something of a surprise to find that most human mothers could recognize their new baby by smell alone. Not only that, but most new mothers can identify their offspring with just a simple touch on the hand.

A new mother’s senses of smell and touch are much more sensitive than expected, and these two senses affect moms and their families in ways that are only beginning to be understood.

A key to the complexity of motherhood can be found in smelly shirts, of all things. In a famous “sweaty T-shirt” experiment, women were asked to sniff T-shirts worn by men for two nights. They were asked to describe the odor of the shirts—which by now were filled with the “perfume” of male sweat—in terms of intensity, pleasantness, and sexiness. The unexpected results made headlines. Women unfailingly preferred the T-shirts of men who had MHC genes (the genes that can detect disease) that were
the least like her own. Amazingly, women could sniff out a guy’s genetic code. On a biological level they seemed to know that it would aid their offspring’s health to have varied MHC genes and their noses told them which guys would help them create healthy offspring.

Which brings us right back to babies and those smelly shirts again. This time, in a Jerusalem hospital, the sniffers were new mothers who had spent at least one hour with their newborns. These moms took a whiff from three bags. Each bag contained identical undershirts that had just been removed from three newborn infants—one from their new child. Every single mom could identify her own child by smell—sometimes after only an hour of being together.

It seems a mom’s nose knows how to pick a mate that will give her healthy children. And a mom also has the scent-ual ability to recognize and bond with her own infant—instead of a stranger’s kid from down the hall.

Like her sense of smell, a new mom has a heightened sense of touch. At the Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, volunteer mothers tried to identify their own infants from a group of three babies asleep in their bassinets. The catch was that they had their eyes and noses covered with a heavy scarf and they were only allowed to stroke the skin of the infants’ hands. Even so, 69 percent of the moms knew their own infants, more than double the number that would be expected by random guessing. When asked how they recognized their own babies, most moms said texture and temperature, though some couldn’t explain it.

So why do new mothers have such a heightened sense of touch? The pleasure from skin-to-skin contact with
their babies may help them ensure their infants’ development. Animal and human studies show that touch is important to brain development in newborns. Human babies also benefit from touch. Premature infants who receive massages gain weight faster and come home from the hospital earlier than nonmassaged infants.

Lots of touching, skin-to-skin contact, and just plain old cuddling aren’t only pleasurable to sensitive new moms, they’re a way for her to give her babies a good start in life.

Fathers of newborns also tried to identify their own offspring solely by touch. And they did almost as well as moms, with a 61 percent success rate. Dr. Marsha Kaitz, who ran the Jerusalem study, found dad’s style different from mom’s. Touching between fathers and babies was less caressing and soothing, more patting and playful.

Preemie babies benefit when dads give them massages and “kangaroo care.” For kangaroo care, the dad opens his shirt and the baby lies on his chest with nothing on but a diaper. Then they put blankets on the baby, and dad and baby have some bonding time together. Babies relax and show the benefits of a decrease in their heart rates and oxygen consumption; they’re less stressed when they do kangaroo care with dad.

Dad, mom, and baby: they all benefit from the scentsations of smell and touch.

Espionage was all in a day’s work for this Civil War mother and daughter.

D
uring the Civil War, two of General Grant’s most valuable soldiers never fired a shot. Instead, a wellborn mother and her brilliant daughter risked their fortune and their very lives while pouring tea and serving soup. Widow Eliza Van Lew and her unmarried daughter ran one of the Union’s most ruthless and successful spy operations.

Eliza Baker always moved in privileged circles. The daughter of the mayor of Philadelphia, Eliza married John Van Lew, a wealthy hardware merchant, and moved to Richmond, Virginia. She might have been born a Yankee, but she became a true Southern aristocrat and presided over one of the city’s finest homes, the mansion on Church Hill.

Here, amid the splendid marble fireplaces, crystal chandeliers, damask hangings, and mahogany furniture, Mrs. Van Lew raised her children and entertained the distinguished of her day with lavish balls and receptions. John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court, frequently came to dinner. The famous “Swedish Nightingale,” Jenny Lind, sang in the music room and Edgar Allan Poe recited verses in the conservatory.

Even though she lived in the South, Mrs. Van Lew did speak out about the need to end slavery despite the family’s owning fifteen slaves. Her daughter, Miss Lizzie, was even more outspoken about the evils of slavery than her mother. Actually, she ranted so much that the locals suspected Miss Lizzie was a few stays short of a corset. After John Van Lew’s death, his widow and daughter freed their slaves, a move that must have had the town gossiping! But talk in Richmond quickly turned to larger matters. Tensions between North and South were heating up—war could come at any time.

On April 17, 1861, the Confederate flag flew over Richmond, which had become the capital of the rebel nation. Even though the Van Lew women considered themselves patriotic Virginians, they disagreed with secession. In despair, mother and daughter vowed to battle until the Stars and Stripes returned to Richmond. They never wavered.

When Northern prisoners of war were brought to Libby Prison in Richmond, Lizzie saw her chance to actively help the Union. Miss Lizzie first asked for permission to bring food and medicine to wounded Union soldiers, but was denied. Undeterred, Miss Lizzie won the day with buttermilk and homemade gingerbread for the head of Confederate prisons, Lieutenant Todd, who was the half-brother of Mary Todd Lincoln, interestingly enough.

Soon Miss Lizzie began regular visits to the prison. She and her mother provided clothes, bedding, books,
stationery, and medicine to the Union soldiers. But helping the wounded wasn’t their only goal—picking up military secrets became an important objective.

Imprisoned soldiers picked up military information overheard from Confederate guards and officers, vital news for Union generals! Miss Lizzie took information from the prisoners and passed it to the Union secret agents that had also infiltrated Richmond. When visting the prison, she often hid written messages in the bottom half of “double bottom” dishes, a set in which the bottom dish was supposed to hold hot water to keep the food warm. The soldiers’ food may have been cold, but the information was sure hot! Once, knowing a suspicious guard was onto her, Miss Lizzie brought in a double bottom dish wrapped in her shawl. When the guard tried to examine the dish, he howled in pain, since Miss Lizzie had filled the bottom dish with boiling water!

Most spies are careful to hide or disguise their political sympathies. Not the Van Lews. They used their politics as a cover. Miss Lizzie openly championed the Union and Mrs. Van Lew vowed to help its wounded men. Friends, neighbors, and even the newspapers railed indignantly against the two for “spending their opulent means in aiding and giving comfort to the miscreants who have invaded our sacred soil.”

Both Lizzie and her mother could have been executed for treason to the Confederacy had their spying operation been uncovered. By being open about their politics, both women were able to hide their operations in plain sight by being underestimated. Richmond Confederates tolerated
the pair as just a couple of oddballs—a charitable, but misguided, widow and her overwrought daughter. The pair played their role to the hilt. Miss Lizzie, who knew everyone thought she was a little off, even began muttering to herself and acting so strangely that she soon had a new nickname, “Crazy Bette.”

In addition to their prison exploits, the team had developed a squadron of spies to help supply information to Union agents. Some of the Van Lews’ freed slaves stayed on as paid servants, tending a small family farm outside of Richmond, carrying messages in their shoes or inside buckets of vegetables. Crazy Bette’s open criticism of the Confederacy actually brought many of Virginia’s humbler folk to her door. Farmers and shopkeepers admitted they were loyal to the Union and were soon secretly enlisted in the spy ring. As she became more adept at espionage, she sent and received coded messages directly from Union General Benjamin Butler and even General Ulysses S. Grant. She kept the key to the codes until her death.